


half of my heart is in Havana

by rainbowagnes



Series: Historical AUs [2]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: 1950s, Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Spies & Secret Agents, Cold War, Cuba, Dancing, F/M, First Times, Heartbreak, Hotel Rooms, Rum, rival spies
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-04
Updated: 2017-07-04
Packaged: 2018-11-23 03:05:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,941
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11394069
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainbowagnes/pseuds/rainbowagnes
Summary: Cuba, 1958Cassian Andor and Jyn Erso, rival spies working for the same cause, reach a crossroads.ORI somehow managed to mash up The Man from Uncle and Dirty Dancing CAUSE I CAN.





	half of my heart is in Havana

**Author's Note:**

> This is a piece I cut out from a larger work that was a collection of AU's. It was a bit too long and ungainly but I was still attached to it. 
> 
> In this, Cassian is a Mexican spy working for the Americans, and Jyn is an East German working for the USSR.
> 
> I listened to the 2015 Buena Vista Social Club album while I wrote this, which is clearly an anachronism but helped to set the tone.

The first time they kiss, it's a sultry Cuban night.

They sit across from each other, sipping at drinks in a club just this side of seedy. 

"You got your orders?" 

She nodds. "I ship out with Goraya in the morning." 

"I meet with Draven at twelve in the harbor." 

"It's been a good time, Vaquero."

Her little nickname for him. Grating, at first, but endearing in the long run, a name that is theirs and theirs alone and not chosen by th FBI or the KGB. 

(What parallel lines their stories are, their lives controlled by agencies in countries that aren't their own, their orders dictated in languages that are foreign on their tongues.) 

"I have enjoyed our partnership, Berlin." He takes a long swig of beer. "So this is the last time we see each other, yeah?" 

"Yeah."

They sit in silence for a long, heavy moment. And then on a whim- 

She holds out a hand. "The name's Erso. Jyn Erso." 

"Why are you telling me this?" 

"We've stopped a Neo-nazi madman from using my father's research to make a weapon capable of destroying the planet. I'd say it's fair you learn my fucking name." 

Her father. K called him a Nazi, told Cassian it was lunacy to trust an East German for anything. But Cassian has had to trust her with his life. And now he has the feeling that he would follow Jyn Erso- Jyn Erso! He knows her name, can think of her as something other than "Berlin" or "Lina Halifax"- into fire if she would only ask him first. 

It is a terrifying feeling. 

"In that case,"- he leans down and brushes his lips against her knuckles, the image of the gentleman his mother would want him to be- "it is a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Miss Erso." 

"Yours as well, Mister?" Mister not-Jeraldo Suarez, the agency name he's been operation under for months. Mister-

"Andor. Cassian Jeron Andor." 

He can hear Command screaming at him for being so lax, but fuck them. In this moment all he wants is to give this girl some real piece of himself. 

"Cassian. . ." She tastes his name, slowly, on her tongue. 

"What?' 

"It's just . . . not the name I would expect you to have." 

"Why?' 

"Too soft." She smiles at him, genuine and wide and full of teeth. It's a smile he thinks he might to anything to earn. 

It's a smile he will never see again. 

The music runs through them like a third heartbeat, linking theirs. Bata drums and claves and laud. The singer keens into the microphone, songs about home and family and lost loves, and it isn't hard for Cassian's mind to wander. To what could be. To the world where he takes Jyn Erso on a proper date to a restaurant with a white tablecloth and asks her questions about herself as the waiter pours glasses of overpriced wine. To the world where she answers the questions, unafraid of the repercussions. To the world where he has the chance to get to know her as a person. 

To the world where there is time.

But this is what they are, the Mexican and the East German, and this is all they will ever be. This is all the time they'll ever have.

So instead of dreaming of impossible things, Cassian decides to focus on what he can see and touch and feel. 

"May I have this dance?" 

"What? With me?" She just looks shocked. "Why?" 

"Because I am in Havana with a beautiful woman. It would be a shame to waste the music." 

"A fucking tragedy." She's smiling, that broad and real smile. She downs the rest of her glass of rum for liquid courage and grabs his hand. He tries not to think of how perfectly her hand fits in his, or how their bodies line up, her hand on his shoulder, his hand fitted to the tight curve of her waist. 

Her eyes look up at him through the dark rings of her makeup, the irises so very, very green. She's beautiful, choppy brown hair and tight, tight black cocktail dress and revolver he knows is strapped to her thigh, just out of sight. He hungrily tries to memorize the details of her face to last a lifetime.

"Your move, Captain. I thought you wanted to dance."

He pulls her into the fray in response. He starts with a simple salsa step, letting her follow as they slide into the music. She's a good partner, which is a blessing when there are so many other things to distract him. 

And then, for a long while, they do not talk at all. He leads her, and then she leads him, their bodies moving in neat synchronization across the checkered dance floor. It's been a while since he danced, and he suspects Jyn hasn't danced this way before, but she's a fast learner. They move in time to the beat, and it's a thrill as he dips and swings her, the physical manifestation of a kind of trust he hasn't felt with another person in years. 

Eventually they pause and he fetches two glasses of punch, some terrible concoction that smells like pineapple juice. She downs hers greedily. 

"One last dance, Captain?" 

"One last dance." He agrees.

"It's been a while, hasn't it? Since you danced."

"Yes, I-" he catches the meaning of her question, cemented by the smirk on her face. "It has been a while." 

"I've danced. But it's been a years since I've had a good partner." 

He looks at her then, her face shiny with sweat and her eyes alive in a way he's rarely seen before. It's one of those moments when he thinks he glimpses Jyn Erso, not Lina Halifax or Tamar Pontira or any one of her many aliases, layers of armor. 

"I am honored, Miss Erso." 

"The fuck with that. Call me Jyn." 

"It has been my pleasure, Jyn." 

"Please, Captain," she whispers, and then she's on him, her hands wrapped around his neck. "The pleasure is mine." 

She kisses him. 

-oOo- 

She kisses him, and it's soft lips and the scratch of his beard (she's never kissed a man with a beard before- at least, not voluntarily, and certainly not like this, hungry and searching). It's slow and intimate, but hot and faster, faster, faster, quickening to the beat of the song. It's sweet from the punch and bitter from the thought of what could be. 

It's everything, all at once. 

His body stiffens in momentary surprise and then he's liquid again, molding himself to the shape of her, leaning down slightly to match her height. (Even in heels she's shorter than him.) Her hands rise to his hair, and they're kissing, losing themselves in each other an-" 

He breaks away. "Jyn, we shouldn't be doin-"

"If we listened to everything Home Office said, we wouldn't be allowed to fucking breathe." 

He looks unconvinced. 

"One last dance, Captain?" 

Ah flash of the grin she knows is his undoing and he has her up against the wall, undoing her as well. 

They do stop, momentarily, long enough to stumble out of the club and into a hotel that's mildly more reputable but not by much. Cassian digs a roll of pesos out of his pocket- which country's, his or his cover's, he isn't cognizant enough to check- and they get a room key. 611. Thin walls but no immediate neighbors. 

They barely make it through the door. 

They should curse themselves for their idiocy, for putting their careers- hell, their lives- on the line. It's a mutual agreement- if word of this reaches home office, either of them, then it was a necessary fuck for information. For the Glory of the Motherland and the Freedom of America. 

But what is it, if it's not a fuck for information? 

Jyn doesn't know.

Afterwards, they lie on top of the bed, his thumb rubbing circle across the back of her hand. Like some characters in a fucking children's story. But the room's fan is faulty at best and the night is hot and soupy. There's a kind of humidity in Cuba that makes the heat worse, clings to ever surface and makes the sheets and their skin uncomfortably sticky. 

"This was what they warned us about." She can hear the smile in his voice. Fucking hell, she's going to miss his voice. She tries to remember the cadences of it enough to last a lifetime. 

"Having sex in cheap Cuban hotel rooms?" 

"Getting seduced by loose Soviet women." 

"What?" 

"You heard me, seductress." 

"I honestly was not trying to do that, at all." And she wasn't. It's a technique some people use, but Jyn's strength had always been her blunt force and ability to get the fucking job done without fancy covers. "If anything, you were the one seducing me." 

"Me? Seducing you?" 

"Yes. With the caring about me and buying me croquetas and coming back for me." 

"You have a low bar for men." 

"And yet your kind still always disappoints." 

She turns to face him, noses inches apart on a cheap hotel pillow. His hand reaches out, runs through her hair, ghosts upon her skin. Lower, lower, lower. 

"Do we ever see each other again?" 

"Of course," he says, and it's the last thing he says before he goes down on her, that and- "You still owe me a last dance." 

\------ 

She's up first. That's how she leaves, so she doesn't have to say goodbye. 

Her dress is in one corner, her shoes in another. She doesn't know how her bra ended up wedged into the malfunctioning fan but it takes a good minute to work it free. 

She zips herself back in, thankful to God he was patient with the zipper. She does what she can to smooth her hair in the bathroom mirror, rub off the make-up with a damp towel- fuck, her eye make-up's smudged into something truly raccoon-like, but whatever, it's the style- and then there really isn't any practical, physical reason for her to stick around.

She walks to the edge of the bed. He's still passed out, and she can surely take a second to admire the view, long tawny limbs stretched out on the sheets. She leans over, buried her nose in the back of his soft hair, and tries not to cry. 

"Iche liebe dich," she whispers into his damp hair, soft words in a harsh language she knows he can't understand. A hand reaches out for her, subconsciously. 

She leaves before he can find what he's looking for. 

She's gone the next morning before he wakes up. 

(He'll try not to think of her, but every time he's given an official lecture about the dangers of Soviet seductresses, who in the propaganda reels are all leggy blonde Russians, his mind goes to the tiny German brunette who beat up Nazis with truncheons and stole pistols and could polish off plates of moros y cristianos in under two minutes. The women in the newsreels are always vague nationalistic threats, never women really, never human. 

Jyn was the most achingly human person he'd ever met.) 

(They'll meet again, decades in the future, after the wall is torn down. [[She steals her neighbor's axe and takes down a piece of it herself.]] Havana is closed- they meet in Miami instead. He's waiting at the airport, thin and grey but eyes still very, very much the same. They eat at Versailles Restaurant, walk Calle Ocho, watch the water break against the shore. 

In the evenings, he takes her dancing.) 

**Author's Note:**

> I may write a part 2 to this that's more of a prequel of How They Got Into This featuring very sexy concepts like data disks and bureaucracy. 
> 
> As usual, any and all comments appreciated!


End file.
